Making SpaceSample

Heart

If we don’t learn how to bring our hearts before God and honestly examine what’s really going on inside ourselves, we’ll close ourselves off to one another and to God. We’ll stop loving one another. One of the biggest challenges to the church in America today is that we don’t pay attention to our hearts. We’re often content to drive forward with good, solid theology without paying attention to the condition of our hearts. Consequently, we live in isolation with festering wounds.

We’re not outside-in people but inside-out people. When we feel that something is wrong with us, most of try to fix the problem by doing. We change our schedule. We tell ourselves we’ll eat better, exercise more, or spend less time on our phones. But the problem isn’t any of those things; the problem is our hearts. They’re sick and in need of God’s help. We can’t change our hearts through behavior modification; we need heart transformation.

It’s impossible to have a clean heart without Gospel transformation. God must come to us and make us new. We need to examine our hearts and invite the Holy Spirit to continue to change us. The gospel isn’t just for the moment we believe. We need the gospel every moment of our lives. Our hearts are made new by the Holy Spirit the moment we believe; they’re renewed as we pursue the Spirit day after day. 

If you don’t slow down and say, “God, work on my heart; reveal what I’m believing; reveal what I’m thinking; reveal what I’m wanting; reveal what I’m lacking,” you’ll continue to run away from your heart. However, your heart is driving everything you do. If it continues to go unexamined, you’ll lose your life chasing things you don’t even understand. You’ll be tired. Your soul will be exhausted.